On the trails of North Vancouver, Kelli Sherbinin emerges as a beacon of light in the mountain biking community. Known for her adaptable teaching style, she is an educator, speaker, and community advocate, promoting riding to connect with nature and challenge individual boundaries. She inspires riders to push their limits and emphasizes the sports' transformative impact on personal growth.

Sitting in her kitchen, one of the few rooms of her home that shows no evidence of DIY renovations, Carys Evans sips from a mug made in her basement studio—one of only a few without a feminist theme, and reminisces about her days as the first sponsored female freeride mountain biker. Her story bends and weaves along a timeline of bikes, travel, working in the trades, finding her way home in clay and the reclamation of vulgar words.

Full of tumultuous energy and a deep-seated desire to prove herself, Claire Buchar poured everything into mountain biking. She’d always dreamed of being an athlete, but at 20, when she took up riding, no courses or workshops were available to learn skills. She simply kept up with the guys and did what they did. Never doubting herself, if they hucked something, she was right there with them.

At one time, Norma was heavily engaged in her local mountain bike community as a well-loved and devoted member. Most recently, however, she has emerged as a sought-after skate documentarian committed to highlighting nontraditional people in the space. As a Mexican woman, she’s spent her career drawing on experiences and lessons learned between both sports to increase accessibility for others.

Mainstream media is awash with stories, slideshows and film clips celebrating “mountain mommas who rip” within days and weeks of giving birth. But many new mothers have discovered those success stories are not always the norm. Set up by the expectation of quick recoveries and hampered by a lack of information available, women looking forward to returning to the sports they love are instead often finding further injury and frustration.

Trans-Cascadia has become one of the Pacific Northwest’s most notorious events: a four-day, blind-format, backcountry enduro race on some of the region’s most challenging terrain. However, their mission extends beyond the event. The nonprofit has created a successful model for setting up a race and supporting sustainable trails, giving back to the local communities on which the event depends.

The time between peak seasons in a resort town brings to mind unfavorable weather and closed businesses. In Whistler, BC, however, the shoulder season is prime time for mountain biking. Warm autumns interspersed with more moisture create ideal trail conditions. Getting laps in before Canadian Thanksgiving, when the bike park closes, can be the perfect end to a phenomenal riding season, but many overlook a whole other network of trails.

In 1911, 18-year-old Maggie Symonds found herself deposited from a ship on the flat rocks five miles southeast of Pachena Point on Vancouver Island along what is now the world-renowned West Coast Trail. Years later, when she recounted her first impression of the uninviting and harsh coastal landscape that would be her home for the next three decades, she remembered thinking, ‘My God, what have I come to?’